“Ain’t no party like a Roskilde party”

All text and pictures by Henrik Gustafsson.

Morjens and greetings from the annual Roskilde Festival in Denmark!

The first Roskilde Festival took place in 1971, in July 2018 the Wrong Rock Show’s and Finland’s DJ Finnjävel visited the festival for the 21st time. You might already have heard my musical report from Roskilde, broadcast on Bush Radio 23 July 2018 – if not, you’ll find it here.

South Africans galore

Without examining all the old festival programmes, I’d claim 2018 might have set a new record for the number of South African artists playing Roskilde: BCUC, FAKA and Moonchild Sanelly all featured in this year’s line-up.

BCUC’s Zithulele “Jovi” Zabani Nkosi

BCUC’s Kgomotso Neo Mokone

Soweto’s BCUC knocked me out with their mind-blowing live show at last year’s festival, see my 2017 blog entry. This year, they returned to a bigger stage (moving from Gloria, with a capacity of about 1,000 people, to Pavilion, being roughly twice the size of Gloria). I’m happy to report that history repeated itself: the place was packed and we all went nuts, singing “ain’t no party like a Roskilde party” as we strolled out of the tent after the concert. If the band’s Roskildevolution continues like this, I guess BCUC will headline the festival in less than five years. (I might add that it really is quite rare for artists to play Roskilde two years in a row; more or less the only band that springs to my mind is Finland’s The Flaming Sideburns, who played both 2000 and 2001.)

There’s a nice little live video clip of BCUC on the Roskilde Festival YouTube channel.

The rest of the South Africans performed at KlubRÅ, an intimate club space first introduced in 2017, fusing art and music at the festival. The Johannesburg performance art duo FAKA had prepared a show especially for KlubRÅ, and earlier that same day, they also participated in a short artist talk about being black and queer together with Sandra Mujinga from Norway.

Sandra Mujinga

FAKA’s Buyani “Desire Marea” Duma

FAKA’s Thato “Fela Gucci” Ramaisa

FAKA

Just like FAKA, Moonchild Sanelly is also based in Johannesburg, and she brought her “future ghetto funk” – mixing music, fashion and dance – to KlubRÅ at the final night of the festival. She was also invited by Damon Albarn to join Gorillaz for one song, the last band playing Roskilde’s gigantic main Orange stage (with a capacity of more than 60,000 people) this year.

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Equality, art and activism

Starting in 2016, Roskilde Festival’s three-year standpoint theme has been equality, with a focus on political equality and human rights in 2016, cultural equality in 2017, and, finally, economic equality (and inequality, leading to migration and corruption) in 2018. The ordinary beer drinking, head banging festival goers might not necessarily have noticed this standpoint, at least not until they bumped into the “equality walls” situated near the Orange stage. These were copies of some of the prototypes of the wall that Donald Trump plans to construct between the United States and Mexico.

Equality walls

Initially, I wasn’t that impressed by this year’s Art Zone (situated between Orange and Gloria) exhibitions, but much of the artwork actually looked better at night.

Jillian Mayer’s (USA) Slumpies were a series of abstract furniture sculptures

Synthetic fluorescent stone sculptures by Nat Bloch Gregersen from Denmark

Pathway, designed by SANO, an architectural office based in Copenhagen

Graffiti artist: Alice Pasquini (Italy)

Graffiti artist: Farid Rueda (Mexico)

Graffiti has always been a part of Roskilde Festival, but usually the art curators also try to come up with something new and exciting every year. This year, there were a couple of fascinating installations in the foyer of Gloria. Pleun van Dijk from The Netherlands mass-produced little babies, while the Danish Lysbid duo (Maria Cramer Møller and Anna Østergaard Laursen) sold personalised jelly shots – in exchange for your fingerprints and access to your personal data…

Pleun van Dijk: Replika – Staging a Human Production-Line

Welcome to the body lab

The Lysbid bar

An “activist talk about rights and personal engagement” might not sound like the most exciting of events at a festival, but whistleblower Chelsea Manning spellbound the audience who managed to squeeze into Gloria at Roskilde Festival. And that shouldn’t surprise anybody, because few people alive can match her background, if you ask me.

She (or should I say he, because back then she was known as Bradley Manning) joined the US Army after finishing high school in 2007. In 2009, Manning was sent to Iraq as an intelligence analyst. In early 2010, she sent some 700,000 classified documents to WikiLeaks, who published the material via The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel. Manning was arrested some months later, and sentenced to 35 years in prison in 2013 – the longest sentence ever given for leaking US government information. While in prison, she publicly identified as a trans woman and began transgender hormone therapy. In his last week in office, President Barack Obama commuted Manning’s sentence, and she was released in May 2017. And then, in July 2018, Chelsea Manning gave her talk at Roskilde Festival.

Chelsea Manning

After seven years in prison, Chelsea Manning found Trump’s America resembling Iraq (see video): ”I was very alarmed, you know. I went out and everywhere I looked, you know, I see, everywhere in America right now, it’s just heavily armed police, body armour, rifles… I see a domestic military operation.”

Chelsea Manning also said that everybody belonging to any minority has reasons to be afraid in America right now. Now, that sounds scary. Who of us does not belong to some minority? Chelsea’s talk ended on a happier note, though: she has taken up music again, so maybe she’ll show up as an electronica artist at future Roskilde Festivals.

Possibly boring but certainly important facts about volunteering and sustainability

Just like Bush Radio (albeit on a different scale), Roskilde Festival depends on the work of volunteers. 31,000 volunteers helped making the non-profit festival great again this year, and most of these return to work for Roskilde year after year. And once again, the festival was completely sold out (80,000 full festival tickets + 20,000 one-day tickets) well in advance. The Roskilde Festival Charity Society organises the festival with the purpose of generating funds to donate to humanitarian and cultural initiatives. Over the years, the society has donated more than 345 million DKK to charity – just to name one example: in August this year, the festival supported Copenhagen Pride with a 500,000 DKK (approximately 67,000 EUR) donation.

Roskilde Festival has an ambitious 2016-2019 strategy for social and environmental sustainability. The goals include the festival activities being carried out “without negative environmental impact” and “with consideration and respect for human rights and human resources”. A lot of work needs to be done before these goals are fulfilled, and the festivalgoers can also do their share. For instance, a lot of camping gear is left behind, and the festival spends 8 million DKK every year cleaning up this mess.

There are about 180 food and beverage stands at Roskilde Festival, and last year they reached the goal of serving an average of 90% organic food across all stands (with almost every fifth stand serving 100% organic food). This year, the food stands also presented “climate menus”, showing calculated CO₂ emissions of every dish.

A few more highlights and one single Finn

I don’t even need to check the musical programme before heading to Roskilde; I just know that I will meet old favourites of mine at the festival and I will stumble upon “new” artists to fall in love with instantly. Let me present one each of these from this year’s line-up.

I’ve seen the Norwegian free jazz drummer Paal Nilssen-Love at least three times before at Roskilde Festival: the three-headed garage jazz beast The Thing played in 2006, the cacophonic free jazz ensemble Fire! Orchestra (with some 30 members) in 2014 – both of these are led by sax master Mats Gustafsson, by the way – and in 2014, Paal also played as a noisy no-wave duo with Arto Lindsay. Fantastic concerts, each and every one of these, I might add.

Paal Nilssen-Love on stage with his Japan Free Jazz and Noise combo

This year, Paal Nilssen-Love played three unique shows in Roskilde, blasting off on Wednesday with Paal Nilssen-Love’s Japan Free Jazz and Noise – and I guess the name says it all… A wonderfully brutal gig! On Thursday, it was time for another world premiere, Paal Nilssen-Love’s Brazil Funk Impro: “groovy, noisy, loud and hard”, in the words of Mr. Nilssen-Love himself. On Friday, Paal went to a jazz festival in Norway, only to return on Saturday with the big band Large Unit Brazil Edition.

A small part of Large Unit Brazil Edition

You might have noticed that I haven’t been praising any Finnish bands playing Roskilde 2018, and the only reason for that is there were no Finnish bands playing Roskilde 2018… But wait! I still have an ace up my sleeve! The Finnish electronic noise artist Tommi Keränen is a member of Large Unit, and there he was, turning his knobs, stage left…

Tommi Keränen, Finland

If Paal Nilssen-Love was well known to me beforehand, the same cannot be said about Rascasuelos from Argentina, playing passionate tango “with the intensity of a rock band”, according to the festival programme. They are one of the groups at the forefront of Buenos Aires’ contemporary tango scene, and since their live show featured dancers as well, I was in for a real treat.

Rascasuelos with band leader Patricio Bonfiglio on bandoneón in the background

May I have this dance?

Most of the food I had at Roskilde Festival was quite disappointing, but this Vegan Russian was one of the most delicious drinks I have ever had

 

Keep getting it so wrong!

We are proud to announce that once again The Wrong Rock Show on Bush Radio 89.5fm is nominated in the Mixcloud Online Radio Awards as a finalist for the Best Online Music Show in the Rock/Alternative category.

This is the second time the show has been nominated and we wish the crew good luck and encourage them to keep being “so wrong, it’s right”.

Catch The Wrong Rock Show every Monday on 89.5FM in Cape Town and worldwide via our live stream at 10pm…or catch the shows on Mixcloud.

Related: So Wrong, Mixcloud thinks we are right

 

 

From South Africa with Fury: BCUC “killed” Roskilde

by Henrik Gustafsson aka DJ Finnjävel for Bush Radio’s “The Wrong Rock Show“

Morjens and greetings from the annual Roskilde Festival in Denmark!

The first Roskilde Festival took place in 1971, in June-July 2017 the Wrong Rock Show’s and Finland’s DJ Finnjävel visited the festival for the 20th time. You might already have heard my musical report from Roskilde (including all the artists discussed here and much more), broadcast on Bush Radio 17 July 2017 – if not, look for it on Mixcloud  where it will be uploaded at some point.

Musically, the festival was (as always, I might add) a gigantic global goody bag. Here on the BushBlog, I will spotlight a handful of African and Asian artists – and the inevitable Finns… Other aspects of the festival are covered towards the end of this entry.

It all started in West Africa…

The first concert I saw from start to finish at the Roskilde Festival this year was by Alsarah & The Nubatones. Slightly embarrassingly, they were presented as “West African retro pop”. Alsarah, or should I say Sarah Mohamed Abunama-Elgadi, was born in Khartoum, and the last time I checked, Sudan was still situated in East Africa.

In 1990, Alsarah was eight and had to leave Sudan for Yemen: her parents were human rights activists and people opposing dictator Omar al-Bashir had started to “disappear”. The family, including Alsarah’s sister Nahid, couldn’t stay long in Yemen, either, as the civil conflict forced them to leave in 1994. Alsarah thus arrived in the United States aged 12, in 2004 she moved to New York City where she’s still living. The Nubatones came together in 2010, and rather recently Nahid also joined the band, who made their Roskilde debut this year.

And a fine show it was! Half-jokingly, Alsarah told us the ancient Nubians actually invented everything from pyramids to mathematics, “we taught that to your Roman friends”. Then she continued: “And the Moomins. I know many of you out there won’t agree with it as we’re right here in Moominland, but the little Moomins really are Nubian…”

Wait a minute. Was I hearing things or did she really say that? Everybody knows the Moomins are Swedish speaking Finns, just like yours truly…

The sisters Nahid (left) and Alsarah

Some 20 years ago, the Finnish music media started labelling all the MC5/Stooges inspired garage revivalist bands that flourished at the time up north “Scandinavian action rock”. Many of these were lame wannabe copies of the real thing, but Sweden’s The Hellacopters were the kings of the genre. The band called it a day in 2008, only to return for two live shows last year, in order to celebrate their debut album from 1996, Supershitty to the Max! Playing together again was apparently fun, because The Hellacopters are booked for eight more shows in 2017, one of them at Roskilde Festival.

The original bass player quit after last year’s comeback concerts and has now been replaced by Finland’s Sami Yaffa, possibly a familiar name to the Wrong Rock Show listeners, since he is or has been a member of the revamped New York Dolls, Hanoi Rocks, Mad Juana and Michael Monroe’s current band (where also The Hellacopters’ guitarist Dregen played 2011-2014), to name but a few. Despite this slight change in the lineup, The Hellacopters sounded exactly like they did back in the good old days. It remains to be seen if the band will stay reactivated after the last show of this batch in August.

Sami Yaffa (left) and The Hellacopters band leader Nicke Andersson

On Thursday evening it started to rain in Roskilde and it continued to do so until Saturday. That meant mud.

The Friday concerts at Roskilde’s main Orange stage suffered from lousy weather. Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 sounded and looked great, but I just couldn’t stand the pouring rain. Photographer: Romain Regal

Denmark’s Afenginn released their sixth album, Opus, earlier this year. It’s basically an ambitious composition in four “movements”, just like a classical symphony, with the addition of Scandinavian and other folk references and featuring the female Glas Vocal Ensemble, who bring along their passion for Bulgarian choral music. In Roskilde, the seven-piece Afenginn performed the whole of Opus as an extended 20+ orchestra of strings and winds and Glas. The Pavilion stage (with a capacity of about 2,000) was bursting at the seams during the show, as Afenginn’s magnum opus ranges from dreamy moments to thunderous eruptions. Oh, and by the way: Afenginn’s Copenhagen-based band leader Kim Rafael Nyberg is actually originally a Swedish speaking Finn, just like yours truly and the Moomins…

Afenginn, fronted by the dreadlocked Kim Nyberg

Bantu Continua Uhuru Consciousness

As we were approaching midnight on Friday evening, Foo Fighters had already been playing for a couple of hours in front of probably more than 50,000 fans. Frankly, I couldn’t have cared less about what was going on by the Orange stage, as I was standing in line outside Gloria, the festival’s only indoor stage with a capacity of about 1,000 people. The only South African band at this year’s Roskilde Festival, BCUC, were scheduled to start at a quarter past midnight.

Letlhogonolo Atlarelang Maphunye

Zithulele “Jovi” Zabani Nkosi

I wasn’t really quite sure what to expect from the Sowetans live. Of course I had done my homework and listened to the BCUC co-hosted Wrong Rock Show from February 2016 beforehand: LISTEN HERE

While the festival guide mentioned “ancestral trance-funk” and “vigorous vocals that from time to time sound like manic priests”. But would “Afro-psychedelic funk music from the rainbow nation” attract people in the middle of the night – people, who were wet and tired and cold after 24 hours of rain? After all, BCUC are not a household name in Scandinavia.

Daniel Thabo “Cheex” Mangel

“Jovi” and Kgomotso Neo Mokone (with tambourine)

I needn’t have worried. Even before BCUC climbed the stage, Gloria was getting crowded. And once the concert commenced, it immediately became clear that we were in for a rare treat. Occasionally, I am overcome by hubris and imagine I have already seen and heard everything and will thus not even raise an eyebrow, no matter what band I may encounter. Luckily, there are still acts like BCUC out there, reminding me there are things going on in the world of music I really haven’t got the faintest idea about.

Thabo Saul “Luja” Ngoepe

”Cheex”, ”Luja”, ”Jovi” (front), Ephraim Skhumbuzo Mahlangu, Mosebetsi Jan Nzimandi (bass guitar).

I had simply never experienced anything quite like BCUC live before. It was intense beyond anything my words can ever convey to you. The relentless drumming (two bass drums, congas, percussion…) was almost literally mind-blowing. I rarely sense any danger in rock bands anymore, but BCUC’s lead vocalist “Jovi” seemed so convincingly aggressive that it was downright scary at times. (Let me add that right after the show, he was the kindest man imaginable.)

Don’t get me wrong: “Jovi’s” stage persona isn’t all aggressive

“Jovi” even floored himself

I wasn’t the only one to be blown away by BCUC in Roskilde. Towards the end of their set, the band pulled me up on the stage for a short impromptu photo session. Probably because of this, the following day I was stopped by a number of people in the festival crowd. They all recognised me from the night before, and they all said the same thing: BCUC was the most astonishing show they had seen so far at the festival. Some even thought the steaming one-hour gig had been almost too much to handle, without a second of respite from their audio assault.

Music for the people, by the people, with the people

Towards the end of their set, BCUC had turned Gloria into a steamy sauna, the audience was ecstatic – and The Wrong Rock Show’s DJ Finnjävel made his Roskilde debut on stage (thanks to the band!)

From Indian serenity to Finnish metal psychedelia

BCUC finished my festival Friday in knockout style, but luckily an uplifting experience was waiting for me as soon as I woke up.

A mere 12 hours after BCUC took over Gloria, the duo of Indian slide guitar master Debashish Bhattacharya and tabla player Gurdain Singh Rayatt began their sublime concert at the very same stage. It was still raining outside, but the good-humoured slide virtuoso didn’t mind: “July is the monsoon month, after all”. And then he started playing rain ragas on his beautiful self-built 22-string Hindustani slide guitar called chaturangui. “This is not music you hear every day here in Denmark.” Spot on, Debashish.

Gurdain Singh Rayatt and Debashish Bhattacharya

I had the honour and pleasure of meeting Debashish Bhattacharya after his wonderful concert. He told me about the background of his new album Hawaii to Calcutta: A Tribute to Tau Moe, and how he met the Hawaiian slide guitar legend Tau Moe (1908-2004) in 2004, “one of the highlights of my life”.

South Korea’s Black String take their name from the geomungo, the giant zither, whose name translates as “black string”. The quartet’s leader Yoon Jeong Heo is a superb geomungo player and her band mates play traditional Korean instruments and electric guitar.

The Gloria Saturday may have started in a somewhat traditional Asian manner, but there would once again be an abrupt change of mood before the night was over. No less than three Finnish psychedelic underground metal bands (PH/Mr Peter Hayden Band, Oranssi Pazuzu and Atomikylä) were booked to finish this year’s festival at the Gloria stage, promising to take us towards Hell and outer space, lifting off at 22:30. The ride might have been too heavy for some people, because at 2 in the morning, while the last band of the batch were still playing, only the die-hard headbangers seemed to have not left the building.

PH/Mr Peter Hayden Band: “When they unleash their sound, you can cocoon yourself in sheer walls of drone, fractured samples and doom-y noise.”

“Experiencing Oranssi Pazuzu is like falling down through a black hole and ending up somewhere between heaven and hell.”

“Atomikylä will close down the pitch-black night with lengthy psychedelic jams.” (All the metal quotes are stolen from the festival guide.)

A sold out festival means millions to charity

This year’s Roskilde Festival was completely sold out (just like in 2016), which means millions of Danish Krone (DKK) will be donated to charity, as the festival always donates all profits to social and cultural charities. Last year’s profits were 17.4 million DKK. Think about it for a minute: you buy your festival ticket, then spend four days or maybe even a week eating and drinking in the fields of Denmark – and all this contributes to the profit. Since 1972, more than 320 million DKK (approximately 43 million EUR) has been donated to humanitarian and cultural projects benefiting children and young people around the world.

Up until 11 August, the audience could nominate projects or organisations to receive a part of the donated profit. This year, the festival had a focus on cultural equality (ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality) and the nominations must also reflect that. Furthermore, a nominated project or organisation must seek “a socially responsible and sustainable development of society by means of involving young citizens”.

Princess Nokia (US) talking about femininity in hip hop (moderated by Iranian Copenhagener journalist Nazila Kivi) in the festival’s Art Zone, a couple of hours after her live show.

Only about 60 people get paid for their festival work (mainly with management, administration, communication and booking), while approximately 32,000 volunteers organise the “Festival City” with its more than 130,000 inhabitants. Experts have studied the festival organisation, and they came up with the flattering description “the art of the impossible”.

Let’s talk about Art (Art who?)

Apart from 180 musical acts, the audience can also expect to bump into numerous other art forms while moving around the festival area in Roskilde. The curator group is looking for art that will create dialogue and be interactive, humorous and moving. This year, the arts theme Human/Non-human was an extension of the festival’s overall focus on cultural equality, including also animals and plants besides humans. Projects were developed to investigate the relationship between art, the festival area as nature and the people it interacts with.

In 2015 and 2016, the Graffiti Zone was the place to go to check out graffiti. This year, there was no specific zone, instead the graffiti was spread all over the festival area. Graffiti artists from at least 15 different countries were working in Roskilde in 2017.

Jayn (DE)

Stereoheat (DE)

Lush (AU)

The epicentre for art at Roskilde Festival is the Art Zone, located between the main Orange stage and Gloria. All art pictures are taken in the Art Zone.

Killer Jellyfish, by Tue Greenfort (DK). Jellyfish have reached Denmark via ballast water from tank ships and are now reproducing to an extreme extent. Their spreading has disastrous consequences to the ecological balance (which makes them quite humanlike…)

55.615 12.082, by Regitze Engelsborg Karlsen (DK). These sculptures are covered with dirt and trash (such as the beer can in the picture) collected from the festival and camping area. 130,000 visitors transform the empty fields into Denmark’s fourth biggest city, the presence of culture thus leaving a lasting mark on nature.

There were 15 sculptures by Karlsen in the Art Zone

Wheat roots, a detail of Network. “Where we dance, we sprout/Where we love, we grow roots and become more than One/Why not human? How human?” (Excerpt from a text by the Network artists.)

Network, by Rune Bosse & Thinking Hand (DK/AU). Six towers made out of roots of wheat, lit up and smoking in the night.

Man cannot live on beer alone

With more than a million meals served at about 120 food stands, leftovers simply cannot be avoided. In 2017, Roskilde Festival collaborated for the fourth time with “The Round Table” organisation, collecting food waste and making it into meals to be distributed to e.g. shelters, centres for the mentally ill and asylum centres. In 2016, almost 35 tonnes of surplus food was distributed to the marginalised in more than 75 different recipient places; that equals 120,000 meals for people on the edge of society.

Roskilde’s strategy to be a sustainable festival is also seen in the tableware used: all plates, cutlery and mugs are produced from biodegradable materials. In 2017, at least 90% of the food served at the festival had to be organic. All food stands must also have a vegetarian dish on the menu, a requirement the meat eating Danes might find surprising. I could list a whole bunch of food vendors, whose obligatory veggie meal felt almost inedible in its bottomless tastelessness, but I prefer to leave you with a couple of culinary highlights instead. Mikuna is a vegan restaurant in Århus, Denmark, and if they are selling their heavenly burgers next year, too, I might consider eating nothing else all festival. Except for chocolate rum balls, of course.

The Wrong Rock Show’s coveted award for the Most Delicious Vegan Festival Food 2017 goes to Mikuna’s vegan burger & chilimonade combo.

DJ Finnjävel loves chocolate rum balls

Click here for related posts

From Roskilde with Love

All text and pictures by Henrik Gustafsson, except where noted.

Henrik “DJ Finnjävel” Gustafsson looking for blogging inspiration in Roskilde

Morjens and greetings from the annual Roskilde Festival in Denmark!

The first Roskilde Festival took place in 1971, in June-July 2016 the Wrong Rock Show’s and Finland’s DJ Finnjävel visited the festival for the 19th time. You might already have heard my musical report from Roskilde, broadcast on Bush Radio 11 July 2016 – if not, look for it on https://www.mixcloud.com/wrongrockshow/

where all the Wrong Rock Shows are stored. Here on the Bush Blog, I will have a look at some other aspects of the festival and also briefly comment on the music.

The 2016 Roskilde Festival started with four warm-up days (25-28 June) of performances on three stages for the happy campers in the audience, followed by the four main days (29 June – 2 July) when the inner festival area with its six stages is opened. I only went for the main days, which meant I missed the only Finnish act in the line-up: the guitar-less garage trio Have You Ever Seen the Jane Fonda Aerobic VHS? – by now well-known to all you Wrong Rock Show listeners…

Have You Ever Seen the Jane Fonda Aerobic VHS? Photographer: Heidi Kero

The warm-up days give up-and-coming Nordic artists a chance to try their wings in front of a relatively large crowd. At a press conference, Head of Programme Anders Wahrén pointed out that there might be even 50,000 people arriving at the festival before the main days, some of these only setting up their tents, but an audience of 1,000 or 5,000 people is still much more than these bands can expect at their club shows back home. “And they couldn’t compete with Neil Young during the main days, anyway.”

Head of Programme Anders Wahrén and spokeswoman Christina Bilde.

Unfortunately, no South African musicians were booked for this year’s festival. Previously, for instance Lucky Dube (2002), Tumi and the Volume (2008), Shangaan Electro (2011), Spoek Mathambo (2012) and Die Antwoord (2010 and on the Orange main stage 2015) have had the honour of playing Roskilde.

The proud Danish owner of this shirt had actually bought it in South Africa.

However, there is much more than just music (by a mere 183 artists from more than 30 countries in 2016…) going on during the festival, and on Sunday 26 June, the South African performance artist Athi-Patra Ruga performed Decimation, a new chapter of his ongoing saga The Future White Women of Azania. Decimation took place as a procession from the Museum of Contemporary Art to the Roskilde Festival grounds, with Ruga himself and maybe 20 invited drag performers dressed in balloon costumes parading and encouraging the spectators to join the show.

A DIY instrument workshop at the festival.

Running between stages, I bumped into Rancho Aparte from Colombia, playing an impromptu off-venue show.

Africa Express

Africa Express, the Damon Albarn-spearheaded cross-cultural collaboration between African and western musicians, has been closely linked to the Roskilde Festival for a couple of years now. In 2015, the festival ended with a five-hour African Express show, involving more than 100 artists. Also last year, the Roskilde Festival Charity Society donated 1 million DKK to Africa Express for the support of education and cultural projects related to African music.

This year, Africa Express opened Roskilde’s huge Orange stage on Wednesday 29 June when the Orchestra of Syrian Musicians + Damon Albarn + Guests wowed the audience for two hours. Back in 2010, Albarn (whose father was a professor of Arab studies and Islamic art, by the way) and his band Gorillaz were accompanied by the Orchestra of Syrian Musicians on a world tour taking them to both Roskilde and Damascus, making them the first major Western band to play in Syria. Sadly, as civil war broke out in 2011, they’re still also the last international act to have played in Syria.

It must have been a logistical nightmare getting visas and work permits for about 30 orchestra members and 20 choir members, now spread all over Syria, Europe and the US, some of them having fled the war without passports. Still, the orchestra managed to offer us a positive celebration of the musical culture of Syria, and I’m sure most of the people in the audience were not that familiar with traditional or contemporary Syrian and Arabic music before the concert.

The guests brought their own flavours to the show, and at least yours truly had never before encountered “the Queen of Arab Hip-Hop” Malikah (Lebanon/France) or Eslam Jawaad (Lebanon/Syria), the first Arabic hip-hop artist to record tracks in classical Arabic. Other star guests, such as Bassekou Kouyaté (Mali) and Seckou Keita (Senegal), were familiar even to me.

Duelling banjos? Nope, Bassekou Kouyaté on ngoni (2 strings) and Seckou Keita on kora (22 strings) jamming with the Orchestra of Syrian Musicians.

Julia Holter (USA) joined the Syrians and Seckou Keita on stage for her 2015 single Feel You. She also sang Paul McCartney’s 1968 Beatles song Blackbird as a duet with Damon Albarn.

Not just bomp bah-bomp and rama-lama ding-dong

In a world seemingly going crazier every day, many artists probably have a lot on their minds but at least in Roskilde they mostly let their music do the talking. Maybe subtle hints are more effective than onstage rants, anyway. Even the glorious PJ Harvey, whose brand new The Hope Six Demolition Project album has very politically charged lyrics, didn’t really say a word in-between songs before presenting her band.

Hurray for the Riff Raff’s Alynda Lee Segarra (of Puerto Rican descent) nailed it on stage: “Fuck Donald Trump” – with two flags hanging behind her back: the flag of Puerto Rico and a rainbow one representing peace. Photographer: Laura E. Partain

Gaye Su Akyol from Turkey was sad and angry because of the terrorist attack “by ISIS shit” on the Istanbul airport a couple of days earlier. A couple of weeks later there was a military coup attempt in Turkey. Hope you are ok, Gaye Su.

Calypso Rose, born in 1940 on the Caribbean island of Tobago. Before playing her new song I Am African, she told us it’s an homage to her great-grandmother, who was brought there from Guinea as a slave. Photo credit: Roskilde Festival

Tal National put on a great show and taught me a thing or two about the peoples of Niger (all six band members belong to different ethnic groups).

Charity, volunteering and equality? Yes, man!

The Roskilde Festival has been 100% non-profit since 1972 and is organised with the purpose of generating funds to donate to humanitarian and cultural initiatives. The Roskilde Festival Charity Society is not allowed to use the profit for forthcoming festivals. This year, the festival was sold out well in advance: 80,000 full tickets and 5,000 one-day tickets for each of the four main days. The profit is expected to be roughly 17 million DKK (or 2.3 million EUR), and it will be donated in full to charity. Festival goers can suggest charitable projects to receive a part of this profit, the nomination deadline is 21 August 2016.

There are only about 60 salaried employees who are paid for their festival work, while some 32,000 volunteers help creating one of the biggest temporary cities in the world with more than 130,000 citizens. Approximately 10,000 volunteers do their work directly for Roskilde Festival Charity Society, while the remaining 22,000 volunteers are attached to the unions and organisations (and there are more than 200 of these) that do trade and service tasks at the festival.

Apart from the music fans and the volunteers, the Roskilde Festival also attracts hundreds of bottle and can and refund collectors, many of these originating from Africa or the Roma community, also including refugees and asylum seekers. With approximately one million litres of beer being served at the festival, not to mention other beverages, in refundable bioplastic mugs (turned into biogas after the festival), there is a lot of money literally being tossed on the ground. The people cleaning up the messy party aren’t, however, always treated as equals by the average beer-drinking festival goer.

This year, the Danish artist group Superflex built VIP lounges, Flagship Shelters/Bottle Collectors VIP, in the festival’s Art Zone for the refund collectors. The architecture of the lounges was inspired by some of the most exclusive fashion stores’ headquarters in Tokyo.

One of the VIP lounges for the refund collectors, with some bloody barbarian pissing on it.

More than 1.5 kilometres of fences and facades are decorated by international artists in the festival’s Graffiti Zone.

The beautifully designed, intimate indoor Gloria stage (with a capacity of roughly 1,000) is situated by the Art and Graffiti Zones. Colin Stetson and Sarah Neufeld were among this year’s performers.

The festival’s standpoint theme as graffiti.

One of Roskilde Festival’s goals is to change and improve the world and the future, hoping the young festival goers will return home with new ideas. From 2016 to 2018, the festival will focus on equality. This year’s standpoint theme was Equality 2016: Stand up for your rights, concentrating on political equality and human rights.

When the first campers arrived in Roskilde, they saw signs stating that the festival would “collect and indefinitely store all text and phone conversations (received or sent) while on festival grounds” and that “all internet activity will be monitored”. Furthermore: “we reserve the right to share this data with our partners”.

This pissed people off, until it was revealed that it was actually a prank by the activist art group The Yes Men. On Tuesday 28 June, The Yes Men interviewed American whistleblower Edward Snowden live via satellite from his exile in Moscow. The conversation with Snowden about digital surveillance was shown on a big screen in the festival’s camping area.

A sustainable food festival

At a press conference, the festival’s official spokeswoman Christina Bilde talked about Roskilde’s two-legged sustainability strategy 2016-2019, built on environmental impact and social impact. Bilde herself called the strategy “utopian”, but it is something the festival is striving for. The goal is to create a carbon-neutral festival with a 100% fossil-free energy supply and where all waste is a resource. Both festival participants and partners ought to make choices having a positive social impact with respect for human rights and human resources.

The food served at the festival is a big piece of Roskilde’s sustainability jigsaw puzzle. In fact, no less than 40% of the festival’s CO₂ footprint comes from the meat eaten there. However, all food stalls are required to have at least one vegetarian dish on the menu – that shouldn’t be too hard, one thinks, but keep in mind that Denmark is found among the Top 15 countries on worldwide annual meat consumption per capita listings.

As a vegetarian myself, more than once I have had to reassure the food vendor that I really do want a seitan hot dog and not one made from dead animals. Still, things may not turn out as expected. At previous festivals, I have for instance ordered a veggie pizza, only to find it covered by a ton of ham. This year, a hummus sandwich I bought was in fact stuffed with tuna spread. On the other hand, I also enjoyed delicious surprises such as Ugandan vegan chapatis this year.

Furthermore, in 2016 Roskilde required that all food stands must use at least 75% organic ingredients (50% last year), and the organic goal will be even more ambitious in 2017: 90%. 2016 was also the third year in a row that left-over food (more than 50 tons of it) was turned into meals for “socially marginalised people”. Truly a great way to make the excellent Roskilde Festival even more sustainable.

Barburrito’s vegetarian tacos may have looked a bit suspicious late on Sunday evening, but they tasted great.

How many wrongs before it sounds just right?

Tune in tonight at 10PM (GMT+02) for a very special 100th edition of the Wrong Rock Show, when Greg ‘the Hammer’ and Botha revisit some favourite artists and tracks played in two years of shows. You can look forward to The Psychedelic Furs, The Gun Club, Boris, Jim Neversink, PJ Harvey, KOOS, The Clash, Kokeshi Doll, Swans, Joy Division and many more. We think you’ll like it, and we’ve been wrong before.

Listen to 89.5FM or online via www.bushradio.co.za

Listen to some of the past shows on Mixcloud

From Kyrkslätt with Love

 

Newspaper clipping courtesy of Västra Nyland

The Wrong Rock Show on 89.5Fm is causing a bit of a buzz in Finland judging by the media reports we have been receiving – see Västra Nyland pic or Åbo Underrättelser. 

The articles are from Swedish-language papers but if you would like to find out what the fuss is all about tune into the Wrong Rock Show tonight at 10pm on 89.5FM or online, when we air the second edition of “From Kyrkslätt with Love”  a segment compiled by Henrik Gustafsson.

Related post: The Wrong Rock Show at Roskilde 2011

The Wrong Rock Show at Roskilde 2011

Roskilde Festival in Denmark, first staged in 1971, is the largest North European culture and music festival and attracts about 75,000 festival goers every year (excluding day-visitors). It is run by a non-profit association, assisted by 25,000 volunteers and every year it donates all profits to humanitarian and cultural purposes. This year, a Bush Radio t-shirt was also spotted walking around the festival site between 30 June and 3 July, when Botha of the Wrong Rock Show attended the festival for a second time.

The Orange Stage has become the symbol of the Roskilde Festival

While the headline acts are always the biggest attraction for the majority of music fans attending, the value of the four-day festival is the exposure fans get to different genres and artists. South Africa was represented this year by Shangaan Electro, who had a stunned crowd on their feet before they knew it, and as the beats got faster and faster no-one could even think of stopping for air. Bands in the 2011 line-up that have been played on the Wrong Rock Show included PJ Harvey, Swans, The Strokes, Battles, Kings Of Leon, The Raveonettes, Congotronics vs. Rockers, TV On The Radio, Zun Zun Egui, The Walkmen, Iron Maiden, Lykke Li, Weekend, Anna Calvi, Kurt Vile & The Violaters, Spids Nøgenhat, Screaming Females and The Ex.

Shangaan Electro had the crowd on their feet (left) and legendary Bassekou Kouyate from Mali played with Afrocubism

While at the festival, Botha also recorded a special Finnish Wrong Rock Show with Henrik Gustafsson and Jan Larsson, two music gurus who respectively attended their 14^th and 22^nd Roskilde Festivals!  This special episode will be broadcast tonight (11 July 2011) between 10PM and midnight, and will feature two hours of rock music from Finland not often heard outside Northern Europe. For more information, visit the show’s Facebook page.

PJ Harvey was one of the highlights for the alternative rock fans (left) and the Swans put up one of the best concerts of the festival to a small group of hardcore fans